A small piece of paper (perhaps 1cmx2cm?) slipped into my macbookpro's slot-loading superdrive today which it was in it's carrying case (I know because i saw a corner sticking out of the drive, and it fell in when i tried to retrieve it).

Anyways, the drive will no longer accept discs...at first it pulled them in, made a noise, and spat them out. I blew into the drive (hoping to blow the piece of paper to some place where it would be out of the way?), and then the drive would accept the disc and hold it, but not read it just make a loud abnormal buzzing noise every now and then...i tried once again, and now it pulls in the disc until about 2mm is still sticking out, waits, and spits it back out. Nothing I do seems to change this.

Technically yes. But they'll only know if you leave sign that you've been in it. If you are skilled at taking computers (preferably laptops) to bits, and you get a hold of the service manual, you should be fine. I expect ifixit.com has a guide if you can't find the service manual.

Have a look and see what you think. Once you get the lid off, there are 3 screws to remove the optical drive. Easy. To get the lid off the drive there are five small screws in the top. You may have to carefully move some of the bracket. I forget whether some of it is stuck on or not.

The only thing you have to watch out for with MBPs, is when you take the top case off, you cannot bend it as far as with powerbooks. There are two screws inside the fromt wall of the battery bay which screw into tabs on the underside of the top case. If you life the back edge off the top case too high when removing it, you will bend the tabs and they can be tricky to bend back without snapping off (especially the right hand one which has a plastic bit as well as a metal one). I hope I haven't made it sound too complicated, it really is quite easy. You may need to invest in some tools for the job. You'll need T8 and T6 torx drivers (It might be T6 and T4 actually), and a nylon probe tool or 'black stick' is very handy, you can find these on eBay. Also you should take care not to touch anything inside the case except the optical drive, and Earth yourself before going in there. Use the nylon tool to pry off connectors, no fingers or metal objects! Do some research on ESD if you want to know more. In a perfect world, you would wear a wrist strap attached to earth. These are also cheap.

You may have another option. Call up Applecare, tell them a piece of paper got in there while it was in your bag, you tried to remove it etc. They may be good enough to cover it for you, especially if you suspect the drive will be OK if the paper is simply removed. They don't have to pay AASPs unless they swap parts. Make sure to tell the AASP when you book it in if Apple agree to cover it, or they will simply pull out the paper and bill you for labour.If the paper is no longer visible, you could chance just taking it in with an unspecified drive complaint. Don't tell them about the paper and hope they don't open the drive. They shouldn't really. Unless they can see a foreign object.

Followup: Well, I opened her up last night, and wrecked one of the screws on the drive brackets, but I managed to get it open and get the paper out. Happy to report that everything works fine now, except that the keyboard no longer sits exactly flat. there's about a millimeter space between the lower case and it. I don't really mind, but yeah.

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